The Fullness of Life
Self-denial
In bringing us forth into existence God did not just abandon us to struggle helplessly for survival. He created both spiritual and material worlds to help us in our journey to our eternal home. Thus, our Lord reminds us, "Look at the birds in the sky. They do bit sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?" Matthew 6:26). God sees to it that we are well-provided in our journey.
But then, our needs can be very complex and diverse. Not only do we need food, shelter and clothing; we also need books, art objects, good music and other things for our intellectual and aesthetic life - above all, we need people. We need friends and other people who can accompany us in the journey and can add to the enrichment of our lives.
If our needs are not provided at certain stages in our life's journey's, we become stunted in our growth, whether spiritual, mental, or physical. In our deprivation we soon begin to feel that something has been missed out in our life which, in turn, makes us feel awkward, ineffective, inferior, and inadequate.
While God is ever faithful in providing us, we do not always have clarity of faith to see His loving providence. Moreover, we always tend to imagine more needs than we really should have, or even invent new needs which we do not necessarily need. The root cause, of course, is the unchecked disorderly desires which constantly lurk like many hungry hogs in the human heart.
Our self-creation of new needs and imagining of more needs than we really need lead us to the endless running after things which do not really contribute to our true well-being or eternal good because they are not intended for us by God.
On the other hand, if we are discerning enough, behind these endless cravings and running after illusory goods we discover that there is, in fact, an infinite thirst in the human heart for the Absolute Good. If this inexhaustible thirst for God is misdirected or deviated into anything which does not lead to Him, life then becomes a hell, or a forestate of hell. We become enslaved to our lower passions and to sin, and this is the greatest form of slavery.
The only way to freedom from this slavery to sin and to the disorderly desires within us is to be a disciple and follower of Christ. But Christian discipleship entails self-denial, as our Lord himself said, "If you want to be my disciple, deny yourself, carry your cross everyday and come follow me."
"Deny yourself"... the condition our Lord is asking us in order to follow him. Self-denial is none other than to give up the illusory desires that continue to separate us from God. It is giving up the endless running after the artificial needs which only complicate our lives. It is emptying our heart from the cravings for created, temporal things so that it can be filled with the Uncreated Eternal Good. It is simplifying our life by reducing or needs to the more essential ones so that we can have the freedom to pursue the lasting values in life, and redirect our journey back to God.
(To be continued)